News hilarity of the day
Biden's staff sounds climate alarm -- about Biden
So yeah apparently there's this "letter to Biden" being circulated now.
Here's the best part:
The letter to Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — provided to The Lever by a House Democratic staffer — is initialed by 165 staffers at federal health and environmental agencies and at 75 congressional offices. They are demanding the president use more aggressive tactics to pass his long-promised climate agenda through the Senate.
“President Biden, you have an exigent responsibility to reduce suffering all over the world, and the power and skills to do so, but time is running out,” says the letter, which is now being circulated throughout the administration for more signatures. “You are the president of the United States of America at a pivotal moment in the history of the world. All that we ask is that you do everything in your power. We’ve done our part. We implore you to do yours.”
Now if you're like me, you get a fair amount of amusement about this sort of thing. Four obvious points:
1) Wait. Isn't the point of being a neoliberal social climber -- and if you are on Biden's team that's what you are -- to have a successful career on a dead planet? What's the matter, people? Are you getting cold feet? Has global murder-suicide via fossil fuel nightmare lost its allure?
2) Oooh look! It's Ro "You don't get anywhere attacking Biden" Khanna, telling the the world that "President Biden must declare a climate emergency now." In two years they'll all be circling the wagons for Joe, or at least that portion of them that hasn't been pushed out and been replaced by Republicans.
3) The stuff they're recommending won't accomplish anything of significance. Here's what the article by Rock and Sirota says:
This unusual action from staffers at Biden’s own agencies spotlights the high stakes of the moment — the window of opportunity to pass climate legislation under a Democratic trifecta may be coming to an end, and it could be years before massive investments in clean energy become possible again.
The letter calls on Biden to “immediately declare a climate emergency and end fossil fuel extraction on federal lands. Then, and most importantly, you must intervene in stalled Senate negotiations.”
Not to worry, though. Fossil fuel extraction will come back, anywhere and everywhere it's profitable, when the price of gasoline hits $10/gallon. And y'all are owned by fossil fuel capital anyway. Yeah, "high stakes of the moment." Uh-huh.
4) Maybe if y'all shout "DO SOMETHING" a little louder it will cover for your failure to think carefully about what has to be done. (The password to open the PDF is AddletonAP2009)
Comments
Theme song for this diary
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
It's too bad
, that that is amusing...
...but it is amusing. Greed is good until the consequences become too obvious. It's getting too hot around here.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11044135/Explosive-California-w...
great tune
keep the music rolling ..
The ship has sailed
Obama was elected because one of the reasons was that he was going to address climate change at a pivotal moment in time remember? And what did he do? Why open the country up to fracking and sent his warmonger in chief across the globe to get other countries to do the same. I don’t think we’ve ever had a president turn on his base as quickly as Obama did. Remember he fired every person who helped get him elected and appointed old stogies that had been in government forever to help betray us.
Anyone who knew Biden’s history and thought he was the president that the country needed….well I won’t finish this thought. From lowering the age for Medicare to raising minimum wage to $15 to everything else he campaigned on he and the democrats have moved on never to bring them up again. But unlike Biden, Obama had a mandate and the will of the people behind him. Biden would never have been elected if he wasn’t running against Trump.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Exactly. The Latter Day Progressives squeak.
These losers are covering their own asses.
That ship has sailed.
I know that it makes the Monday-morning progressives feel good to think this piece of fluff publicity might save the day. Or give their useless lives some meaning. But any real hope, at this point, can only come from the most extraordinary efforts. Such as the effort that China is making to eradicate climate change, just as they eradicated poverty: Millions of Chinese, alongside China's huge military, work every day planting the equivalent of two Amazon Rain Forests(!) on top of their own country. They are also successfully reclaiming the Gobi Desert that run through China.
Like the Great Wall, it's the kind of "real" change you can see from space.
NASA says the Earth is greener now than it was 20 years ago
thanks to China and India.
You said it, Snoop!
How did Obama fail us? Let me count...forget it, I don't do exponents.
Biden is though
in a tough place -- the signs of disastrous climate change are clear, yet if he cuts back on fossil fuel extraction/imports he runs the risk of heating up inflation, currently a hot issue item for most folks.
Biden appears to have two good enough people in place as head of the EPA and as his climate czar, so that doesn't seem to be the problem.
One problem I detect is that the people haven't been sufficiently roused to regard climate change/global warming as the dire threat to their personal security that they should at this late date. One reason for that is that our MSM only gives spotty, inconsistent coverage to the issue, and then mainly in the context of the weather report, rarely taking a step back to discuss the larger picture playing out. When is the last time either CNN or Msnbc spent more than a 4-minute segment on the huge climate change issue?
Apparently the execs/producers long ago decided such coverage doesn't draw enough viewers. And the major environmental groups are largely ineffective and quiet, from what I've seen. , and obviously have little clout with either the media or the WH. Lots of environmental groups, but not much to show for it.
I suspect
more or less half the people in this country consider climate change a hoax. More than half simply do not discuss climate. They talk of weather events.
Wind turbines and solar panels are are made with high uses of oils, plastics, and energy, as well as using mine-extracted parts. They cannot be re-purposed, and when they wear out, they are buried.
I have lost my enthusiasm for those renewables that are not renewable. And after speaking with an electrician about the costs of solar panels and installation and repair, I realized I would not live long enough to break even. I lost interest in it.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Yes, and I'm not sure
who it was some years ago who decided that Solar and Wind shall be our Only alternatives to fossil fuels and nuclear.
A shame that Deep Geothermal -- clean, safe, cheap and constantly renewable -- isn't more discussed and developed by now. It's not too late of course.
MSM will only cover what their masters see fit
and then only in the context of what is favorable to big AG, oil suckers, coal extractors and the like.
congress and the MSM are all in cahoots to present climate chaos in terms of deriving as much profit as they are allowed. It is not about sensible solutions.
The Last Chance Texaco
Biden is tapping the strategic reserve
And exporting it to China. Democrats just blocked a bill stopping him from doing it. Nice to know that corporate profits come before us.
And Exxon knew back in the 70’s that oil extraction and use was bad for the environment. This is an old story but I just saw an article talking about it again. And whilst they have been gauging us at the pumps they are still getting billions in subsidies and tax breaks. Congress could have threatened them on that but then it would lessen the bribes they get back and called campaign donations. Sweet deal for everyone in the big club that we can only dream about.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Well Big Oil
subsidies is one area where Biden could act and do so with little downside, once the public is made aware of how those porcine crooks have been feeding at the trough, which for some reason neither the WH nor the MSM talk much aboot.
I've read the annual subidies from the US taxpayers to Big Oil amount to about $15b with another $5b added by states, so $20b total per annum. Then there are the near or record profits lately.
Big Oil is one big entity that needs to be brought to heel, at least wrt the taxpayers not paying for their exploration and other costs.
And is it the Biden admin or oil companies themselves who decide to sell oil to China?
Pretty much anyone who can pay the rent on "politics"
exists in the orbit of the Utopia of Money, or works for those who are in this orbit.
And, as you've pointed out, the people who direct the flows of money have decided that climate change isn't going to make them more money. As I've been pointing out, however, what will save us will be a revolution, culminating in a utopia that ISN'T the utopia of money. The revolutionaries will borrow from the "utopian surplus" -- that set of utopian dreams that aren't dreams of the Utopia of Money.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
another in the same vein
lost loves
Maybe I'll stop posting music videos.
The point of posting "Smooth Operator" was that the smooth operator was a neoliberal social climber. I'm still trying to figure out how "Crazy" and "the Basia and Rickie Lee Jones songs count as songs about neoliberal social climbers.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
Sorry, didn't mean to spoil your essay
the associations were merely musical.
I don't want to be
a devil's advocate when I refer to Jim Kunstler's "Long Emergency," a 15-year-old book about peak oil. But the key point I take from it is that we in the environmental concern movement don't get a significant part of the problem. It's like everyone in the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Fund or whatever organizations call for the coal, oil and gas companies to stop forcing their stuff on us. Stop producing it. And we will find a way to get around and eat our food without it. Overnight. Or even on the same day.
It's as if we don't get that our food and our pills and our clean water and our sewage treatment and our car and our MRI that shows what's causing our back pain ALL WORK BY VIRTUE OF OIL, are manufactured and transported and are recycled or replaced by oil, that the rare earths or whatever are involved with our x-rays and computers are brought to us by oil, and if we want Exxon and Chevron to stop forcing that stuff on us, we're going to have to stop going to the grocery store, stop using our computers, stop heating our houses, stop driving our kids to soccer practice, stop building plastic soccer fields, and stop arguing about it on the internet.
We're just not even prepared to think about what it would take to change the way we live. Not even close. That was Kunstler's point. It's sadly, more likely that we'll have to become hunter gatherers again, as seriously contemplated by Spencer Wells in his book, Pandora's Seed, than that we'll solve this problem by going back to the horse, a proposal that I make without any understanding of what i'm talking about.
The truth is, we don't understand how to live without oil.
You are right
Life skills have not been encouraged in our education and social systems for many years.
Some of us ancient dinosaurs were fortunate enough to be taught some of the basics, like
how to cook, sew, gather wood, make a fire, trap, hunt, fish, conserve, boat, raise animals,
build shelter, understand nature, etc.
In the present generation, the focus is more on technology. When the tech goes down, either by
solar flares or military/industrial maleficence, the kids are lost. Have not the skills to adapt.
Primary education needs to be redirected to train for the coming issues if survival is important.
Outstanding comment!
We have never actually considered the mass starvation and deaths from untreated illness that is assured when the oil stops. Better hope you are in a decent spot to grow or hunt for food when the climate changers finally win.
As my Dear One is fond of saying, "We are fucked!"
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
China is serious about renewables
They are putting massive amounts of money and expertise to achieve their stated goal of being carbon neutral by 2060. It is estimated they will peak carbon emissions well before their 2030 goal and become carbon neutral before 2050.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6VKTs4AsF8]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grinoVRd3Tw]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZzaTs_q72k]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WlRg5v9bW8]
China has instituted a five-year plan to preserve and increase forested areas. This law also applies to imported wood products. Due to successful reforestation, China is well on the way to self sufficiency. As you all know, when Xi Jinping signs a Five Year Plan, it WILL be adhered to.
Wow, if only the western powers could implement
such strategies in their own back yards ..
we may have a better chance at survival
Meanwhile in the Pacific Northwest,
We are still exporting logs (and the jobs of processing those logs) to China and elsewhere.
And still blaming it all on that mf-ing spotted owl!
Rinse and repeat, before the Spotted Owl
Pacific Northwest timber jobs were being exported to the southern states and timber plus jobs exported to Japan. Southern states enviornment regrowth timber reaches harvestable stage much quicker. Japan was buying the larger logs for a premium price and manufacturing products (called secondary wood products). Many old mills closed across the area.
Progress with automation from harvesting, milling to secondary wood products has permanently destroyed more jobs than export to any other country.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
The point of no return came and went November 22nd, 1963
or perhaps even earlier with the ascension of John and Alan Dulles, or still earlier with the taking of the land of the native population in order to extract, and profit from the abundance the colonists “discovered” in the Americas. We have been a rapacious people from the beginning, oblivious of the need for a sustainable relationship with Great Nature.
JFK may have been the last chief executive to actually make an effort to change the course of our destructive and insatiable greed and our aggressive obsession with wealth and empire, even at the risk of a collapsed ecosystem or an “unthinkable” nuclear Armageddon.
In a November 20, 2013 piece published in Rolling Stone, RFK Jr. described the forces behind his uncle’s violent removal from office. Even if you have already read it when it was published, it deserves a reread.
John F. Kennedy’s Vision of Peace from the December 5th, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone.
“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024